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Ancient Rrahah
Ancient Rrahah was spoken around 10 000BK in the Ytdobogȧn Peninsula, it is a descendant of Proto-Gigxkpoyan. Rrahah is the name of the Ytdobogȧn Peninsula in Gigxkpoyan languages. Ancient Rrahah is one of the most divergent Gigxkpoyan languages and has a considerable amount of innovations, some of them shared with the Southern Ancient Gigxkpoyan language. Phonology Vowels Little was changed in matters of vowel inventory from Proto-Gigxkpoyan, the main difference is that Rrahah displayed vowel harmony (a shared characteristic with Central Ancient Gigxkpoyan and Southern Ancient Gigxkpoyan) Vowel Harmony Ancient Rrahah Vowel Harmony was primarily backness harmony, pairing up u and y, ø and o, ä and a. e and i seem to have been neutral to the harmony processes. Backness Harmony could affect both roots and affixes. The secondary process of Vowel Harmony was Height Harmony; It distinguished only high and non-high levels. Roots were not affected by Height Harmony. There seems to have also existed a marginal rounding harmony, ɑ~ɒ depended of whether there was or not another rounded vowel in the word, but that doesn't seem to have been phonemic. Consonants Aspirated stops were considerably rarer than plain stops. Palatals followed by back vowels were also not that common. /ɹ/ and /ɺ/ did not contrast at coda position. ɦ and ʁ, h and x probably were at free variation. ç and ʝ were allophones of h and ʁ, respectively, before i and y Stress It can be reconstructed that stress could be only in the three last syllables of the word, It was normally penultimate unless either the ultimate or the antepenultimate was a heavy syllable (i.e. had coda consonants). If both the ultimate and the antepenultimate where heavy (and the penultimate wasn't) the antepenultimate was preferred. To clarify (H stands for heavy and L for light, " marks the stress) All light syllables, penultimate is stressed L"LL If the penultimate is heavy it will always be stressed H"HH In the case it wasn't heavy, other syllables could receive the stress: "HLL LL"H If both the antepenultimate and the ultimate syllable were heavy, stress felt on the antepenultimate. "HLH Verbs Verb conjugation in Ancient Rrahah was realized through both prefixes and suffixes. Due to the vowel harmony processes these affixes can be divided into two 'classes' (mainly to make it easier to explain things): The Dominant, which ruled over the roots vowels, and The Recessive, that were rule over by the root. All suffixes are recessive, but the same cannot be said for the prefixes. The verb initial consonant was also a factor in the prefixes allomorphy. There were two 'classes'(again, to make things easier to explain) of Fricative (voiceless ones) Initial verbs, the 'Weak Fricative Roots' that always stayed as fricatives, and the 'Strong Fricative Roots' that underwent fortition to plosives under many environments (and came historically from aspirated plosives and /q/)(hereafter abbreviated to WF Roots and SF Roots; in the lexicon fricative initial verbs will be noted for WFR or SFR) Aspect The irrealis marker had multiple forms due to vowel harmony. It was affected by Backness harmony, as all words are, and it was also affected by height harmony, if the last vowel before it was a low vowel it harmonized. The expected *-hyp surfaced as -p. Voice Ancient Rrahah experienced two major changes from Proto-Gigxkpoyan, a degree of semantic shift happened in the Causative Voice and Ancient Rrahah developed a new Reflexive/Reciprocal voice. Passive The suffix that formed the Passive voiced had the forms *-ja and *-jä, when added, the passive suffixes rounded the preceding vowel. Passive forms were fully functional verbs. Causative/Applicative The Proto-Gigxkpoyan Causative accumulated Applicative meanings in some verbs, being now Causative in some verbs and applicative in others, but these two classes were not mutually exclusive. It was formed trough the addction of *-ta *-tä *-huta *-hata or *-hätä This also formed a fully functional verb Reflexive/Reciprocal The Reflexive Voice patterns with the Insubordination Processes and will be described with them. It was used for reflexive and reciprocal actions, where the subjects remained in the accusative case. When used with plural subjects or more than one argument, it seems that a reciprocal meaning has usually assumed rather rhan a reflexive one. Negation Negation was realized trough prefixes attached to the verb. As opposed to the original Proto-Gigxkpoyan the negative is now a free form. The negative prefix(recessive) could take on the forms of *ku- *kä- *ka- *ky- *kuhu- *kähä- and *kaha-. Again i'll be organizing a chart for the environments. It causes Fortition in SF Roots Subordinators The Subordinators formed verb forms that could not be used in main clauses by themselves, happening in subordinate clauses Each of those will have it's usage and allomorphs described separately below When used in conjunction with the negative marker this usually preceded it. Relativizer The Relativizer was used in relative clauses and has an almost adjectival function. If could be applied to all Aspects. Caused Fortition in SF Roots. As it's only vowel is a neutral one it didn't affect Vowel Harmony. Counterfactual Used to express absurd conditions (e.g. If i were king i'd be happy.) Does not cause Fortition in SF Roots. It's prefixes are Recessive. It's allomorphs are very transparent Vowel Harmony dependent forms. Simultaneous Used to express simultaneous actions Does not cause fortition in SFR It is a Dominant Prefix and has no allomorphs Sequential Used for actions occurring as a sequence without any conditional implications of one action on another. Causes fortition in SFR and is a dominant prefix. Conditional Probably marked absolute conditions (e.g. If (or when) water heats up, it boils) Dominant prefix with no Allomorphs; it did not cause fortition in SFR. Insubordination Strategies Insubordinations strategies are essentially ways to use Subordinated verb forms in Main Clauses. The two constructions that could be reconstructed are the Reflexive Voice and the Necessitative Mood Reflexive Voice The reflexive voice is formed by having a verb in the simultaneous form be used with the verb *cu. As that form cannot sustain further conjugation, the conjugation is made on the auxiliar *cu. An example: säfysyrt cuj løhejä sä-fysy-rt cu-j lø-hejä SIM-wash-PRO auxiliar-PERF ACC-3P he/she/it/them washed (him/her/it/them)self(ves) Necessitative Mood Meaning something like english must, have to (or Japanese -なければいけません) It was formed by having a Conditional + Negative used in conjunction with the adverb thanku (now); It normally referred to future statements and could not be further conjugated. ekajkacoj thanku king ekaj-ka-co-j thanku king COND-NEG-walk-PERF now 1PS i have to walk Some rather hairy constructions could be done if one were to combine both insubordination strategies: säfysyrt ekajkacuj thanku løkyng sä-fysy-rt ekaj-ka-cu-j thanku lø-kyng SIM-wash-PRO COND-NEG-aux-PERF now ACC-1PS I have to wash myself Infinitives Infinitives were used when the clause was used as an argument of another clause and as Imperatives In order to form the Infinitive form, the verbs root underwent vowel changes in their final vowel: That's the general vowel alternation chart, Vowel Harmony could however mess up with this chart, generating fully 'harmonized' outcomes: This is common with the Infinitives of Passive and Causative forms, as they undergo vowel harmony Another complication are the roots in a, as they can generate infinitives in either u or ä and are completely unpredictable. Here again the Passive and Causative Infinitives are example, the Passive form generates an Infinitive in u, and the Causative generates an Infinite in ä. In the lexicon roots in a will be noted as either a1 (Infinitive in in u) or a2 (Infinitive in ä). Nouns Case Ancient Rrahah developed a healthy amount of cases, coming mostly from PG prepositions. The cases were marked through proclitics, that are all Dominant (i.e. dictate the roots vowel realisation). As those cases are a comparatively recent innovation they are all regular do not seem to have displayed allomorphy. The accusative is older than the other markers and behaves like a true affix, before nouns starting with e, it became løhø- and the e disapeared (etoj -> løhøtøj). It was the only one which triggered vowel harmony. These clitics atached to the first element of the NP. Ancient Rrahah nouns also displayed a construct case independent or case marked by the prefix -jun. It signaled that that noun was possessed by the following noun. kapangpajun Rrahah kapangpa-jun rrahah language-CONSTRUCT rrahah Language of Rrahah Prepositions Ancient Rrahah also displayed a number of prepositions, some with rather specific meaning. Some examples are: ju (on top), khir (below), epah (behind), kicin (in the front of), kunujs (in the inside of), con (out of), humt (for (a time period). Those are just some examples. These prepositions came before nouns, and were used with the lative and locative cases. Which preposition was used which case seems to have been dialectal at best and no patterns could be reconstructed. Definiteness and Quantifiers Ancient Rrahah nouns are all uncountable and require quantifiers to be counted. The regular quantifiers for 'one' probably signaled indefinite nouns, while the definite article ingpi marks a singular definite noun (e.g. ingpi ser, the (one) tree). Ingpi occupies the quantifier slot in the noun phrase. Case clitics do not attach to quantifiers. Quantifiers up to 10 are irregular for the most common quantifiers and a chart containing them is below. Larger quantifiers were formed by suffixing the number to the compounding form. There were other, less usual, quantifiers, but those were completely regular (i.e. compounding form + number always) Adjectives Adjectives did not display any agreement nor verbal morphology. Most nouns could operate as adjectives and vice-versa, but many words operated almost solely as adjectives. Adverbs are formed by adding -ku. Syntax Noun Phrase Verb Phrase The normal word order was VSO. Adverbs may come directly after the verb. The exception is that relative clauses have SVO word order. Lexicon Coming Soon Category:Gigxkpoyan languages